Independent journalist Carlos Ríos, who is following the spread of the cholera epidemic in the Cuban capital, was detained for some three hours around noon yesterday in a special station of the political police known as Aguilera, in Lawton, Havana.

According to him, he received an official citation in the evening of January 21, instructing him to appear at the station by his own means, but the next day the police came to find him at his home in patrullero No. 38. In Aguilera, Ríos said, he was taken to the basement of the building to a place where the air conditioning was very cold. They told him he should not continue publishing news about cholera in Cuba, and mentioned a phone conversation that the journalist had had with Cubanet.

Carlos Ríos was the person who first reported the death of a man, Osvaldo Pino, as a result of the pandemic now hitting the capital. This was days before Granma, official news outlet of the Cuban Communist Party, admitted the presence of cholera in Havana with 51 cases but no deaths, according to the paper.

Independent journalist Carlos Ríos, who is following the spread of the cholera epidemic in the Cuban capital, was detained for some three hours around noon yesterday in a special station of the political police known as Aguilera, in Lawton, Havana.

According to him, he received an official citation in the evening of January 21, instructing him to appear at the station by his own means, but the next day the police came to find him at his home in patrullero No. 38. In Aguilera, Ríos said, he was taken to the basement of the building to a place where the air conditioning was very cold. They told him he should not continue publishing news about cholera in Cuba, and mentioned a phone conversation that the journalist had had with Cubanet.

Carlos Ríos was the person who first reported the death of a man, Osvaldo Pino, as a result of the pandemic now hitting the capital. This was days before Granma, official news outlet of the Cuban Communist Party, admitted the presence of cholera in Havana with 51 cases but no deaths, according to the paper.